On September 19, 2008 the PARSS Board of Directors passed a resolution expressing its positions regarding the development of the Commonwealth’s education budget for 2009-10. Its provisions are as follows:

Be it resolved that PARSS supports continuing the implementation of the current funding formula, based on the Costing Out Study and placed in law (HB 1067). PARSS also supports the enhancements to that formula that are listed below. These, if enacted, would help the formula better serve the needs of rural students.

PARSS supports the elimination of the negative impact of the location cost metric (LCM) on 233 school districts that have a metric of less than 1.00.

PARSS supports revising the 2009-10 phase-in percentages to fund all districts more equitably during the formula’s five year implementation period. This will require lowering the percentages for “high” taxing districts, and raising the percentages for “low” taxing districts.

PARSS supports a minimum subsidy increase of at least 2%.

The Board believes that the use of tax effort in determining the state share of each district’s adequacy gap should be eliminated, but realizes that political difficulty and fiscal infeasibility of making this happen could imperil, or bring to an end, the pursuit of the larger goal of implementation of a well-funded formula.